SnikPlosskin
09-01-2011, 4:24pm
I signed up for a yahoo board about GSD's and keep getting these emails from this guy telling me all this complex stuff about how to post, what to post, rules for this, rules for that.
I attempt to post but I guess I used the wrong email log-in so he bitches at me about that. Then I get this email about how they kick people out if they don't post anything - said if I don't post something I'll get banned on September 15th or something.
So I tell him I'm out. Here's his response to my email. My parts are in red. I've bolded a couple parts. (no I don't expect you to read the whole thing...)
Pete Monfre wrote:
I'll take care of canceling my account.
I belong to a number of boards and have never had so many messages chastising me for things.
I don't use boards.
#1: I regard them as playgrounds for ignorant stirrers and malicious troublemakers, both types making use of (1) the anonymity available when there are a 1000 or more subscribers, plus (2) the ease of inventing a new identity as soon as a moderator eventually wakes up and boots them out.
#2: The moderators are themselves often as immoderate as the people they ban.
#3: And when it comes to e-groups, it is obvious from looking at the Home page of many that the OWNER is in the bottom 10% of the population, failures of the state education systems in Britain or the USofA (those 2 nations' education systems are rated about 16th & 20th in the OECD - Canada is rated 3rd, my nation 4th).
Presumably those are the sort of situation where your flaws are minor compared to the BIG troubles those moderators have to deal with - or the owner & moderators are so ignorant that they don't even realise that there IS a proper way to do things.
BTW, in GSD_Friendly, the owner is in the top 6% or higher of the population,the co-owner is a highly qualified nurse, the moderator is a retired police investigator.
However, after losing a valuable member because I advised one alert moderator to tai hoa (= wait a bit) when 2 valuable members from the field of SchutzHund started picking at each other (after all, both were very experienced mature adults!), and by the time I DID intervene there was no way that either of them would apologise to the other, so the one who had been placed on full moderation until she apologised to her opponent (it was close to being "luck of the draw" as to which of the 2 was given that ultimatum) unsubbed instead, I choose to be more interventionist, so that people don't reach the stage of causing an upset to the atmosphere of the group.
That departed member & I still get on okay, BTW - she is now moderator - maybe even owner - of a SchutzHund e-group I used to belong to.
Yahoo is a inscrutable interface that I find difficult to use.
I rarely use the clunky Yahoo interface. The sensible way to compose an e-mail is in a proper e-mail composer. The best is Mozilla ThunderBird. Next best is bossy MicroSoft OutLook. Between them, that pair hold about 99.5% of the "market" for e-mail programmes.
YahooGroups is FAR from inscrutable. I picked it up on the first day, when I was already 60-something (back then my employers paid for my connection, so that they could send me work by e-mail and so I could send them results and my time-sheets by e-mail instead of us each having to courier them overnight).
When I created my first e-group (because the owner of my favourite e-group announced that she was closing it - we later found that she was undergoing a highly emotional divorce) I needed 2 hectic weeks to learn to do EVERYTHING that was available within a YahooGroup - before that I had never used anything except the Messages section, had no idea of how much an owner has access to that an ordinary member hasn't.
I am NOT a fan of Yahoo's idea of "Help" sections, so on some functions I had to give up on the "Help" and go ask owners (of other groups I was in) how to access/perform some things. But I got there in just 2 weeks.
The reason YOU find Yahoo inscrutable is because you don't READ the information made available to you - starting with that "What You NEED to Know BEFORE..." file. Continuing with my massive personal help message when you did wrongly just about everything that could be done wrong - and although you cleaned it up, you did NOT take notice of the 2 ways I explained for putting it into the right thread, and you did NOT sign it.
Being confused by terms you aren't used to is fine - all occupations and hobbies have their in-group jargon (I have just had a polite discussion with a multilingual woman used as a translator by her nation's canine bodies - she was convinced that "rump" was a wrong translation for a particular German word (I'm not sure whether Rumpf or Steß), "croup" was right, and she claimed that no speaker of English would, use "rump" for it. So I showed her a couple of English-language Kennel Clubs who use the word "rump" in their on-line "rebel" Breed Standards).
Those who WANT to be in that in-group ask for explanations of the jargon. You didn't.
I also own a couple of GoogleGroups, ready for should Google ever catch up with Yahoo for convenience & flexibility in its group set-up. YahooGroups are far from perfect, but they are better than the other attempts I've seen on-line.
Perhaps using VBulletin would make your life easier.
Maybe NOT!
Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords - www.esecurityplanet ...
... eSecurityPlanet.com. Security Headlines From Around the Web. All Security Headlines
From Around the Web». Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords. ... Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords - eSecurity Planet (http://www.esecurityplanet.com/headlines/article.php/3894856/Security-Flaw-in-vBulletin-Exposes-Passwords.htm) - 87k
Perhaps I have misunderstood, but the issue for me is the apparent tone of your emails - I'm getting a lot of frustration.
Dead right, Pete.
You ARE frustrating me.
The moderators and I put a LOT of effort into predicting what newbies would NEED to know. Each time we discovered that members were more ignorant than we had predicted, we posted the proposed changes to the group for their comments & approval.
You were SENT the current version of that document.
You are either one of the world's worst readers, or you arrogantly ignored it.
I put a LOT of time into explaining how to deal with your one-&-only post to the group.
Again: You are either one of the world's worst readers, or you arrogantly ignored it.
If it is such a hassle running the board, perhaps you should hand it over to someone else.
I don't run a "board". I am owner or moderator in about 12 groups, all except 3 of them aimed at narrow niches of the population of GSD fanciers.
Since I was sending this message to you, not the group, I used my normal email (the one you sent to).
Which doesn't explain why it TWICE bounced, producing the "account disconnected" or some-such Mail Daemon-report.
I submitted my "required" post
No, the post you sent was NOT written as one that is "required", it was a voluntary one, in reply to a topic started by another member. The "required" one mentioned in the letter to permanent lurkers is an Introduction. However, the important thing is to "show willing" and not sit silently without participating - so ANY reasonmable message is accepted.
via google as you said. Apparently that still wasn't "right".
Depends on how you intended me to interpret the adjectival pronoun "that".
• If your "that" means you using gmail, that was fine - it is the only address that you have set as your address for membership.
• If your "that" means the lack of attention to detail (#1: NOT using the e-address that was your MEMBERSHIP and to which the original message from Fenella was sent, and where your READ it. #2: NOT clicking the [Reply] button while looking at Fenella's message, to thus automatically #3a: place your reply IN the thread it is a response to and #3b: WITH the same subject-line as used by the creator of that thread, and for you to then #4: NOT end WITH a proper mannersly sign-off), then that post definitely "wasn't "right"" first time, when you sent it to the owner, nor second time when you DID send it to the group but ignored almost everything I'd spent hours explaining to you - well, I TRIED to explain it to you.
Someone who claims to "belong to a number of boards" - which implies that he actually PARTICIPATES in those fora - ought to be well aware of the requirement to use the [Reply] button in THAT thread on the board's web-site. But you chose to use illogical alternatives in my group.
What a great way to welcome new members.
It wasn't my welcome. My welcome was in the automatic messages that you appear to have decided that YOU didn't need to read.
What I sent to you privately was a set of much-needed assistances.
But you again appear to have decided that you didn't need to read it.
Had you not buggered things up so badly first time, I would have mildly publicly chastised you in the group. I cannot recollect ANYONE who made such a complete balls-up of their first message, and while searching (starting in May 2001) for groups that had the informative people I needed in order to round out what I already knew about GSDs (knowledge gained as a result of getting my first cross-breed in 1950 and my first GSD at Easter 1967, and having been a club obedience instructor plus show judges steward plus a range of roles for the GSD Advisory Council, plus all the analyses I have programmed my computer to produce once I've input the data it needs) I went through many e-groups based in my country, in Britain, in Canada, in the USofA.
I EXPECT PEOPLE TO READ CAREFULLY THE INFORMATION THEY HAVE BEEN SENT.
Unfortunate. I think I could have brought value to the group.
But as you have yet to demonstrate that, we'll never know, if you unsub. Based on your application:
It is likely that you believe that you would be more expert in the training field than Joy (a professional in ALL the fields of aide-dog work), than Kari (operates an S&R group), than Miriam (several times rep in the USofA international SchutzHund team, and captain of it about 3 years ago; president & head trainer of her own SchH club; used to have her own radio programme advising phone-callers on how to deal with their pooch's problems). There are others, such as the lass I've forgotten the name of - maybe Alys? - who is a professional trainer in drugs & explosives detection.
I value diversity of informed-&-based-on-thoughtfully-analytical-experience opinions, but if you go the group will nevertheless have plenty of experienced advisers in the training fields.
Although I was always a "small breeder" (including partnerships: 310 pups in 44 years, 4 of them being born in Britain, the rest here), we kept up to 8 at a time. Before marriage I'd had 2 "Fockers" and several cats, and Jeannie briefly had 1 GSD before we met; after marriage she had a Cairn and I owned - some with her, most without her - 32 GSDs. I'm waiting for the intended dam of my hoped-for-future litter to be xrayed then come on-heat (she had her last heat early, starting on the morning she was supposed to be xrayed...), but you might be interested in the sort of breeding that appeals to me: Lorelei Pacht Pippa - German Shepherd Dog (http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=721734)
Les Pauling, hoping to get to bed at a decent hour on Saturday - it is now 7:40am on Friday and I MUST get to bed.
WTF?
I attempt to post but I guess I used the wrong email log-in so he bitches at me about that. Then I get this email about how they kick people out if they don't post anything - said if I don't post something I'll get banned on September 15th or something.
So I tell him I'm out. Here's his response to my email. My parts are in red. I've bolded a couple parts. (no I don't expect you to read the whole thing...)
Pete Monfre wrote:
I'll take care of canceling my account.
I belong to a number of boards and have never had so many messages chastising me for things.
I don't use boards.
#1: I regard them as playgrounds for ignorant stirrers and malicious troublemakers, both types making use of (1) the anonymity available when there are a 1000 or more subscribers, plus (2) the ease of inventing a new identity as soon as a moderator eventually wakes up and boots them out.
#2: The moderators are themselves often as immoderate as the people they ban.
#3: And when it comes to e-groups, it is obvious from looking at the Home page of many that the OWNER is in the bottom 10% of the population, failures of the state education systems in Britain or the USofA (those 2 nations' education systems are rated about 16th & 20th in the OECD - Canada is rated 3rd, my nation 4th).
Presumably those are the sort of situation where your flaws are minor compared to the BIG troubles those moderators have to deal with - or the owner & moderators are so ignorant that they don't even realise that there IS a proper way to do things.
BTW, in GSD_Friendly, the owner is in the top 6% or higher of the population,the co-owner is a highly qualified nurse, the moderator is a retired police investigator.
However, after losing a valuable member because I advised one alert moderator to tai hoa (= wait a bit) when 2 valuable members from the field of SchutzHund started picking at each other (after all, both were very experienced mature adults!), and by the time I DID intervene there was no way that either of them would apologise to the other, so the one who had been placed on full moderation until she apologised to her opponent (it was close to being "luck of the draw" as to which of the 2 was given that ultimatum) unsubbed instead, I choose to be more interventionist, so that people don't reach the stage of causing an upset to the atmosphere of the group.
That departed member & I still get on okay, BTW - she is now moderator - maybe even owner - of a SchutzHund e-group I used to belong to.
Yahoo is a inscrutable interface that I find difficult to use.
I rarely use the clunky Yahoo interface. The sensible way to compose an e-mail is in a proper e-mail composer. The best is Mozilla ThunderBird. Next best is bossy MicroSoft OutLook. Between them, that pair hold about 99.5% of the "market" for e-mail programmes.
YahooGroups is FAR from inscrutable. I picked it up on the first day, when I was already 60-something (back then my employers paid for my connection, so that they could send me work by e-mail and so I could send them results and my time-sheets by e-mail instead of us each having to courier them overnight).
When I created my first e-group (because the owner of my favourite e-group announced that she was closing it - we later found that she was undergoing a highly emotional divorce) I needed 2 hectic weeks to learn to do EVERYTHING that was available within a YahooGroup - before that I had never used anything except the Messages section, had no idea of how much an owner has access to that an ordinary member hasn't.
I am NOT a fan of Yahoo's idea of "Help" sections, so on some functions I had to give up on the "Help" and go ask owners (of other groups I was in) how to access/perform some things. But I got there in just 2 weeks.
The reason YOU find Yahoo inscrutable is because you don't READ the information made available to you - starting with that "What You NEED to Know BEFORE..." file. Continuing with my massive personal help message when you did wrongly just about everything that could be done wrong - and although you cleaned it up, you did NOT take notice of the 2 ways I explained for putting it into the right thread, and you did NOT sign it.
Being confused by terms you aren't used to is fine - all occupations and hobbies have their in-group jargon (I have just had a polite discussion with a multilingual woman used as a translator by her nation's canine bodies - she was convinced that "rump" was a wrong translation for a particular German word (I'm not sure whether Rumpf or Steß), "croup" was right, and she claimed that no speaker of English would, use "rump" for it. So I showed her a couple of English-language Kennel Clubs who use the word "rump" in their on-line "rebel" Breed Standards).
Those who WANT to be in that in-group ask for explanations of the jargon. You didn't.
I also own a couple of GoogleGroups, ready for should Google ever catch up with Yahoo for convenience & flexibility in its group set-up. YahooGroups are far from perfect, but they are better than the other attempts I've seen on-line.
Perhaps using VBulletin would make your life easier.
Maybe NOT!
Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords - www.esecurityplanet ...
... eSecurityPlanet.com. Security Headlines From Around the Web. All Security Headlines
From Around the Web». Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords. ... Security Flaw in vBulletin Exposes Passwords - eSecurity Planet (http://www.esecurityplanet.com/headlines/article.php/3894856/Security-Flaw-in-vBulletin-Exposes-Passwords.htm) - 87k
Perhaps I have misunderstood, but the issue for me is the apparent tone of your emails - I'm getting a lot of frustration.
Dead right, Pete.
You ARE frustrating me.
The moderators and I put a LOT of effort into predicting what newbies would NEED to know. Each time we discovered that members were more ignorant than we had predicted, we posted the proposed changes to the group for their comments & approval.
You were SENT the current version of that document.
You are either one of the world's worst readers, or you arrogantly ignored it.
I put a LOT of time into explaining how to deal with your one-&-only post to the group.
Again: You are either one of the world's worst readers, or you arrogantly ignored it.
If it is such a hassle running the board, perhaps you should hand it over to someone else.
I don't run a "board". I am owner or moderator in about 12 groups, all except 3 of them aimed at narrow niches of the population of GSD fanciers.
Since I was sending this message to you, not the group, I used my normal email (the one you sent to).
Which doesn't explain why it TWICE bounced, producing the "account disconnected" or some-such Mail Daemon-report.
I submitted my "required" post
No, the post you sent was NOT written as one that is "required", it was a voluntary one, in reply to a topic started by another member. The "required" one mentioned in the letter to permanent lurkers is an Introduction. However, the important thing is to "show willing" and not sit silently without participating - so ANY reasonmable message is accepted.
via google as you said. Apparently that still wasn't "right".
Depends on how you intended me to interpret the adjectival pronoun "that".
• If your "that" means you using gmail, that was fine - it is the only address that you have set as your address for membership.
• If your "that" means the lack of attention to detail (#1: NOT using the e-address that was your MEMBERSHIP and to which the original message from Fenella was sent, and where your READ it. #2: NOT clicking the [Reply] button while looking at Fenella's message, to thus automatically #3a: place your reply IN the thread it is a response to and #3b: WITH the same subject-line as used by the creator of that thread, and for you to then #4: NOT end WITH a proper mannersly sign-off), then that post definitely "wasn't "right"" first time, when you sent it to the owner, nor second time when you DID send it to the group but ignored almost everything I'd spent hours explaining to you - well, I TRIED to explain it to you.
Someone who claims to "belong to a number of boards" - which implies that he actually PARTICIPATES in those fora - ought to be well aware of the requirement to use the [Reply] button in THAT thread on the board's web-site. But you chose to use illogical alternatives in my group.
What a great way to welcome new members.
It wasn't my welcome. My welcome was in the automatic messages that you appear to have decided that YOU didn't need to read.
What I sent to you privately was a set of much-needed assistances.
But you again appear to have decided that you didn't need to read it.
Had you not buggered things up so badly first time, I would have mildly publicly chastised you in the group. I cannot recollect ANYONE who made such a complete balls-up of their first message, and while searching (starting in May 2001) for groups that had the informative people I needed in order to round out what I already knew about GSDs (knowledge gained as a result of getting my first cross-breed in 1950 and my first GSD at Easter 1967, and having been a club obedience instructor plus show judges steward plus a range of roles for the GSD Advisory Council, plus all the analyses I have programmed my computer to produce once I've input the data it needs) I went through many e-groups based in my country, in Britain, in Canada, in the USofA.
I EXPECT PEOPLE TO READ CAREFULLY THE INFORMATION THEY HAVE BEEN SENT.
Unfortunate. I think I could have brought value to the group.
But as you have yet to demonstrate that, we'll never know, if you unsub. Based on your application:
It is likely that you believe that you would be more expert in the training field than Joy (a professional in ALL the fields of aide-dog work), than Kari (operates an S&R group), than Miriam (several times rep in the USofA international SchutzHund team, and captain of it about 3 years ago; president & head trainer of her own SchH club; used to have her own radio programme advising phone-callers on how to deal with their pooch's problems). There are others, such as the lass I've forgotten the name of - maybe Alys? - who is a professional trainer in drugs & explosives detection.
I value diversity of informed-&-based-on-thoughtfully-analytical-experience opinions, but if you go the group will nevertheless have plenty of experienced advisers in the training fields.
Although I was always a "small breeder" (including partnerships: 310 pups in 44 years, 4 of them being born in Britain, the rest here), we kept up to 8 at a time. Before marriage I'd had 2 "Fockers" and several cats, and Jeannie briefly had 1 GSD before we met; after marriage she had a Cairn and I owned - some with her, most without her - 32 GSDs. I'm waiting for the intended dam of my hoped-for-future litter to be xrayed then come on-heat (she had her last heat early, starting on the morning she was supposed to be xrayed...), but you might be interested in the sort of breeding that appeals to me: Lorelei Pacht Pippa - German Shepherd Dog (http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/german_shepherd_dog/dog.html?id=721734)
Les Pauling, hoping to get to bed at a decent hour on Saturday - it is now 7:40am on Friday and I MUST get to bed.
WTF?